The Saints of the Cross by Michelle Figley

descending at mach speed. I’m suddenly aware that my eyes are closed, because a bright, white light now infiltrates and illuminates my eyelids, sending white stars and flashes of color across my visual field.
    I open my eyes and I’m sitting on my parents’ bed in our cottage in Italy. The intrusive light is the Italian morning sun streaming through the east-facing window. My mother is seated at the vanity directly in front of me, brushing her long, silky black hair and humming a tune that I find vaguely familiar and strangely haunting. A chill envelopes me; it’s “Time in a Bottle,” the song she hummed to me every night as she tucked me into bed. I haven’t heard it since the last time I saw her on the night she died. She had gone out that night after putting the twins to bed and tucking me in with a kiss to my forehead. It’s the last memory I have of her.
    I move timidly to the vanity and kneel next to her. “Momma?” She continues humming and brushing her hair. Her blank face and hollow eyes are reflected in the mirror. The sight of her is bone-chilling. “Momma?”
    Keeping her eyes trained on her own reflection, her face remaining expressionless, she lowers the brush down to the vanity and picks up a pair of scissors. With one smooth movement, she pulls a large section of her hair up and snips it off about one-inch from her scalp. With an unnerving cackle, she opens the hand holding the severed hair and watches as the wisps fall to the floor. She grabs another fist-full of hair and moves the scissors in place.
    “Momma! What are you doing?” I cry.
    She snaps her head toward me, and I see that her eyes have turned feral and furious. Her expression alternates between fear and anger. She lifts her right arm up in the air over her head. I look up just in time to see the pointed end of the scissors swiping toward me.
    ***
    I awake on the airplane with a scream. But with one glance around me, I instantly remember where I am and sigh in relief. By the dim twilight outside the window, I know that I’ve slept for the majority of the flight.
    Grandma Winnie turns around and eyes me with a raised brow. “Are you okay, Evie?
    “Yes, sorry,” I murmur, wiping the drool off my chin with the sleeve of my shirt. She gives me a curt smile and then turns back to her book.
    “Bad dream?” Annabelle asks, her voice concerned.
    “Yeah, I’ve been having a lot of those lately, it seems.” I try to stretch my stiff body as much as the tiny seating space will allow. Having long legs can be such a curse at times.
    “Well, good news. We only have about an hour and a half until this thing lands at Dulles. We’ve almost made it, darlin’.” Annabelle swipes her forehead with the back of her hand in an exaggerated display of relief.
    “I’ll be kissing the ground when we land,” I say. “Please don’t think badly of me, but I absolutely hate to fly. I’ve done a lot of it in my life, and it never gets any easier.”
    “I ditto that, darlin’. And at touchdown I say a little thank you to the gods. You know, small miracles aren’t always so small.”
    “Amen to that.”
    An hour and a half later we’re landing—for the most part smoothly—in Washington, DC. I say goodbye to Annabelle after we disembark the plane and again promise to keep in touch with her.
    We arrive around midnight at my Uncle Calvin’s row house in Georgetown. We’re spending the night there because we won’t be able to pick up the house keys from our realtor until tomorrow morning.
    “Evie!”  Aunt Matilda greets me at the door. She’s wearing a strange, tight-lipped smile, her voice steeped in the affectation of a wealthy, East Coast socialite—despite the fact that she isn’t one. She shows us into the parlor. “Good news! Your new neighbor is one of your uncle’s business associates, and his daughter just so happens to be in your class at Holy Cross. We’ve arranged for her to meet you tomorrow afternoon and show you around.